Hav­ing won the first two ODIs of the three-match se­ries, Eng­land have sealed the se­ries and they eye a clean sweep over West In­dies in the fi­nal match at Head­in­g­ley. West In­dies, on the oth­er hand, have not won a win a sin­gle in­ter­na­tion­al match on tour. West In­dies' play­ers have done well in­di­vid­u­al­ly in spurts but the team has failed to per­form con­sis­tent­ly in tan­dem. In the Test se­ries, Shiv­nar­ine Chan­der­paul, Ke­mar Roach, Mar­lon Samuels and De­nesh Ramdin did well in patch­es but bar­ring Chan­der­paul no one was con­sis­tent. Their bat­ting was heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on Chan­der­paul while their bowl­ing looked tooth­less.

West In­dies were bol­stered by the ar­rival of Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bra­vo and Sunil Nar­ine for the ODI se­ries and a com­pelling con­test was an­tic­i­pat­ed. How­ev­er, Eng­land out­classed the vis­i­tors in both games with ef­fort­less ease. Dwayne Smith, Gayle and Bra­vo sparkled fleet­ing­ly with but their con­tri­bu­tions weren't enough to win a match for their team. Nar­ine, who bam­boo­zled the best of bats­men in IPL 5, has not lived up to his billing and looked or­di­nary in both the ODIs. The Eng­land bats­men, who aren't the most ac­com­plished against spin­ners, didn't have much trou­ble work­ing him out and Ian Bell and Alas­tair Cook, in par­tic­u­lar, en­coun­tered him with &ea­cute;lan and flour­ish.

Gayle, who made a come­back in­to the na­tion­al team af­ter a hia­tus of 15 months, siz­zled dur­ing his half-cen­tu­ry in the sec­ond ODI but once he de­part­ed, West In­dies' mid­dle or­der was ex­posed. Smith and Bra­vo are the on­ly bats­men apart from Gayle who could shore up their bat­ting but both are er­rat­ic rather than de­pend­able and con­sis­tent.

Eng­land are rid­ing high on the crest of a string of vic­to­ries and their morale is sky-high. Bell, hav­ing been re­called af­ter Kevin Pietersen's sur­prise re­tire­ment, has stamped his au­thor­i­ty in the ODI for­mat by crack­ing a cen­tu­ry and half-cen­tu­ry re­spec­tive­ly. Cook has been in su­perb form in ODIs since he be­came the cap­tain last year. Eng­land have de­cid­ed to rest their three pre­mier bowlers-Graeme Swann, Tim Bres­nan and Stu­art Broad for the third ODI with Stu­art Meak­er, Chris Woakes and James Tred­well draft­ed in­to the team. James An­der­son will spear­head the bowl­ing at­tack. Jon­ny Bairstow might get a place in the fi­nal XI.

Prob­a­ble XIs

Eng­land: 1 Alas­tair Cook (capt), 2 Ian Bell, 3 Jonathan Trott, 4 Ravi Bopara, 5 Jon­ny Bairstow, 6 Eoin Mor­gan, 7 Craig Kieswet­ter (wk), 8 Chris Woakes, 9 Stu­art Meak­er, 10 James An­der­son, 11 Steven Finn.

West In­dies: 1 Chris Gayle, 2 Dwayne Smith, 3 Mar­lon Samuels, 4 Dwayne Bra­vo, 5 Kieron Pol­lard, 6 De­nesh Ramdin (wk), 7 An­dre Rus­sell, 8 Dar­ren Sam­my (capt), 9 Sunil Nar­ine, 10 Ravi Ram­paul, 11 Tino Best.